You get one-on-one insights from your audience that you can use to make your blog more interesting, and you can make some money without creating an entire e-course from scratch.

Offering coaching on your blog is a smart business decision.

But how do you do it?

Like, how do you collect payment? Or get people to schedule a call time without sending 15 back-and-forth “when is good for you” emails?

And when you do get people on the phone, what do you say?

Today we’re going to walk you through all of that:

How to create a coaching offer people can’t say no to

How to set up your coaching biz so people can easily buy and schedule sessions

How to structure a one-hour coaching call and make sure it’s valuable for your clients

This is where the rubber meets the road—and if you stick to it, where your blog meets everything you’ve ever wanted it to have: dedicated readers, profit, and influencer status.

Sounds good, right?

So without further ado, here’s how to start your own coaching business:

#1. Create Your Mouthwatering Coaching Offer

The best way to get readers to want to hire you as a coach is to give them something to look forward to as a result of your session. Yes, “coaching” means they’ll get to talk to you and pick your brain, but most readers will want a little more than that.

So to create your first offer, start with the end result someone will get after coaching with you.

Are you a business coach who will help them decide on their pricing? Are you a web designer who can give them ten ways to optimize their website conversions?

Decide on an outcome that will be for the benefit of the reader, and build an offer around that.

Here’s an outline to help you:

Identify what you know is a big pain point for your audience that you can solve quickly.

Outline what parts of it you’d easily be able to tackle in a 30-minute or one-hour phone call.

Identify the deliverables the customer gets and can use at the end of the call.

If you feel creative, come up with a fun name for the package. (Just don’t get too cutesy to the point of confusion.)

For example, one of my “coaching” offers is called an “On-Site Copy Teardown.” During the one-hour call, I walk people through their website copy and review any on-site data with them. We find ways to improve their copy so they can get more conversions instantly, without a page redesign.

#2. Set Up Your Coaching Biz and Make it Run Smoothly

**rubs palms together vigorously**

All right, let’s get you set up to advertise, book, get paid for, and deliver your first coaching sessions. We’ll cover:

How to set up your sales processing system so people can purchase your coaching

How to set up a booking system so people can make appointments on your calendar

How to create a sales page so readers can find your offer

It’s a lot of little of steps, but it’s something you can tackle in one afternoon.

Note: I’ll be showing you a free way to get everything set up, but you can easily use a service like SimplyBook.me which is relatively inexpensive and makes setup and booking even more streamlined. Also, I’m using WordPress, but most of this can still be applied if you use another content management system.

1. Set Up a Way to Get Paid

When someone buys your coaching offer, two things need to happen:

The buyer needs to receive an email or PDF with a link to your calendar, so they can schedule a session.

You need to receive the payment in your bank account.

For the first, you need to have an e-commerce platform. And for the second, you need a payment processor like Paypal or Stripe.

I use Payhip to deliver some miniature e-courses that I sell because it specializes in digital downloads, but I’ve also used it as a free way to sell one-hour Copy Teardowns and 30-minute Copy Review Sessions to my students.

First, go to Payhip and sign up for a free account:

After you log in, click on “Account” in the upper left-hand corner, then click on “Settings.”

Click on the “Payment Details” tab, and you’ll see a prompt to connect either your PayPal account or your Stripe account.

You can use PayPal (or PayPal and Stripe) if you like, but I prefer Stripe because it makes credit card payments much easier simply because that’s the only option. People don’t get confused with the additional options of paying with a PayPal balance or hooking up their bank accounts to send an e-check, like PayPal sometimes presents.

Stripe’s got a super-easy-to-follow setup process. If you don’t have an account yet, go to Stripe’s home page and click the “Create Account” button, and you’ll be ready to go before you know it.

2. Set Up a Way for Clients to Book Sessions

Now that you’ve got a way to collect payment from people, you need a way for them to book coaching sessions with you.

First, go to Calendly’s home page and click on one of the “Sign Up” buttons to register for a free account.

After signing in, choose Event Types in the main menu bar. Choose whether you want to open 15-minute sessions, 30-minute sessions, or 60-minute sessions by clicking the “on” switch in the appropriate event type box.

Then, click in the center of the event type box to edit the options for it.

First, select which times you are available for coaching sessions.

Then, in “Invitee Questions,” add any questions you want people to answer before the call. (You might also ask for their Skype username here, or their phone-number if you plan to call by phone.)

And finally, integrate with Google Calendar to add the booking to your calendar and to have an invitation sent to both of you.

3. Create and Upload Your Coaching “Product”

Now we’re going to create the “product” that you’ll sell.

And yes, you’ll technically be selling a coaching session rather than a digital download, but in order to use Payhip, you will need a digital “deliverable” that people will download instantly after purchase.

My download is nothing more than a PDF instruction sheet on how to schedule the coaching session they’ve just paid for, and instructions on what to do in the booking process.

Here’s what it looks like:

Very simple and straightforward, but it gets the job done.

The important part, though, is to make sure this document includes a link to your Calendly page so that people can book sessions with you. After that, include any other instructions you feel are necessary based on the coaching offer you’ve set up.

Then, go to your main Payhip dashboard, and click on the “Add new product” button:

Upload your PDF, give it a title, and set your price.

PayHip will also ask you for a cover image. If you have a blog logo, you could simply use that. Otherwise, Canva lets you create simple but good-looking graphics that are more specific to your offer.

Then you’ll need to add a product description. Most people who get to this page will come from your website or email list and already know what they’re buying. But this is a great place to reiterate the benefits of what you’re offering and what’s involved in your offer.

After that, all you have to do is select a relevant category and click “Add Product.”

And you’re done! You offer is officially for sale!

4. Publish Your Sales Page So People Can Find Your Offer

Phew. Almost there.

All you need now is a sales page so people can actually find your offer and buy a session with you.

Ideally, you want to create a distraction-free page for this. (Meaning no menu, no sidebar, and no buttons that lead to anything other than your coaching offer.) This gives page visitors two options: buy or leave.

Fortunately, many WordPress themes come with a distraction-free landing page template. (You’ll have to check and make sure, especially if you’re using a free theme.)

You can try an online app like Leadpages or a plugin like Thrive Architect to help you build and publish the landing page. (Yes, they cost money, but they also have pre-built templates that have been tested for high conversion rates.)

Now that you’ve set up your page as a landing page, give it a name, adjust the URL if needed, and add your sales copy.

And once the sales copy is written, of course, you need to add the buy button.

To get the code for this, go back to your Payhip dashboard and click on the Share/Embed button that appears next to your product listing:

A window will pop up, and you’ll click on the “Embed Button” tab in that window.

You’ll see the embed code right away, but before you copy it, click on the “More Options” text below the embed code.

This drops down an entire menu of settings where you can adjust the button text, the size, and the display options until it all looks the way you want it to.

After you’ve adjusted the button’s looks to your specifications, copy the code and go back to WordPress.

Click the Text tab in the upper right-hand corner of your content editor, and paste the button code where you want it to appear on your page:

Now, publish the page and add it to your main menu.

First, click “Publish” on the right-hand side of the page editor.

Then go to “Appearance” in the left-hand menu, and click on “Menus.”

Then add a check in the box next to your new page, and click on “Add to Menu.”

And that’s it!

You’ve now got a coaching offer for sale. (Congratulations!)

Hint: Rather than stopping at putting the page in your website menu, drive traffic to your offer in other ways, too. Your website sidebar, social media profiles, mentioning it in your blog posts, and sending information to your email list about your offer are all great ways to get attention to it.)

#3. Run Your First Coaching Calls Like a Seasoned Pro

With figuring out your offer and adding it to your website, you’ve already done most of the work.

But then you get the first booking for your first ever coaching call . . . and if you’re like most bloggers who like blogging because it means you can sit behind a screen and not be in the public eye 24/7, you start to get a little nervous. Maybe even sweat a bit.

And allll these insecurities start coming up:

How can I coach people when I’m not perfect at this myself?

What if they hate what I have to say?

What if no one follows my advice and they shame me on the Internet?

What happens if I end up on a call with someone for two hours instead of one? Should I send them an invoice for double the price or just leave it be?

What if I don’t have enough material to fill the hour they paid for?

Which is why it’s important to remember that you do have something special to offer. If you’re passionate enough to start a blog and write regularly on a topic, chances are you know more than at least 80% of people about that topic.

It’s also important to remember that when people pay for something, it means they’re putting their skin in the game and will be invested in your advice. They’re not expecting you to be perfect—all they need is your advice to get them to the next step.

And while some people will want to just talk and talk and talk about their problems, you’re the coach here, so you’ll need to rein in the conversation and keep it focused on the outcomes you want to deliver within that one-hour conversation.

With time, you’ll become more practiced and discover what works best for you as you do more coaching sessions. But to start out, here’s a great timeline to guide the conversation that keeps everything neatly inside of one hour, and makes sure your client feels heard.

Use This Coaching Call Timeline to Schedule Your Talking Points

Talking Point and Time Estimate

Time Elapsed

3-5 minutes: Exchange hellos and small talk, and ask client to talk about their pain point.

5 minutes

5-7 minutes: Client talks about their pain point and you ask clarifying questions to make sure you’re on the same page.

10-15 minutes

5 minutes: Pick out three major areas to talk about and run them by client to see if they’re on board. You’ll allocate 15 minutes to each point, and can move on to more at the end if you have time left over. This serves as your 45-minute warning.

15 minutes

15 minutes: Talk about and give advice on Point 1. Make sure it’s conversational and that you’re asking the client questions like, “Does that make sense?” and “Does this seem doable?” to keep them engaged.

30 minutes

Give 30-minute warning and transition to Point 2.

30 minutes

15 minutes: Talk about and give advice on Point 2. Make sure it’s conversational and that you’re asking the client questions like, “Does that make sense?” and “Does this seem doable?” to keep them engaged.

45 minutes

Give 45-minute warning and transition to Point 3

45 minutes

10-12 minutes: Talk about Point 3. (It’s usually the least crucial of all three points.) Again, keep things conversational.

55 minutes

Give a 3-5 minute warning and ask if they have other questions you can answer.

55 minutes

5 minutes: Quickly answer questions or, if the client doesn’t have any questions, give a recap of the points you went over and talk about how you’ll follow up after the call.

60 minutes

Honestly, I know 15 minutes might sound like a lot of time to talk about one point, but it’ll go surprisingly quickly. You’ve got a lot of knowledge in your head about your particular topic area, and 99% of the time, clients who pay to get on the phone with you will eat it up and ask all sorts of questions.

If you find yourself in the position of a client having a million more questions and you’re at the 58-minute mark, try not to worry too much. Politely tell them you’ve only got time for one more question, that you’ll follow up with a list of notes on what you’ve gone over, and that if they feel like jumping on another 30-minute or 60-minute call in the next week or so, they can.

Using the reason of having another call lined up after this client is a great exit, even if you don’t actually have one. And honestly, you’ll find most people will have 100% respect for the boundaries you set.

#4. Give Your Clients That Little Bit of Extra After the Call

After the call, as I’ve hinted above, you’ll want to do a brief follow-up with the client as a way to officially close things out and give them the information covered on the call as a point of reference.

Most people will take their own notes, but the follow-up email is always a nice touch and increases their feelings of loyalty toward you as someone who has their best interests at heart.

Equipped with this information, you’ll be able to make your blog more interesting and engaging for people in your target audience, and to validate the ideas you have for products that you hope to make money on in the long run.

You’re Ready! Now Get Yourself Some Coaching Clients

Coaching is the perfect way to connect with your audience and see what makes them tick.

I’ve seen it in my own business: Since I started coaching, I’ve become more relevant to my audience and I’ve strengthened my business at least ten-fold.

I can write content that I know is interesting to them, I know what they’re struggling with, and I know what kind of products to put together so I can generate income from my blog.

And while none of this will happen overnight, you’ll see results from your blog much faster if you coach people in your audience early … even if you only get a few clients here and there.

So create your offer, set up your coaching business, and make your first coaching calls.

It’s never too early to start.

About the Author: Chelsea Baldwin is the founder of Copy Power, where she teaches copywriting and helps entrepreneurs make the kind of “bang-bang” impression that gets remembered (even days after people leave your site). Use her free 3-part email course to learn how to write astonishingly memorable copy for yourself, even if you’re not a writer.

You hear about bloggers who make money while they sleep — bloggers who take epic vacations or spend all their time with their families, and at the end of each month, they still have money coming in.

It sounds too good to be true. Especially when you’re slaving away every day and can barely make ends meet.

But it’s not just an urban legend. Once your blog draws a steady stream of traffic, you can turn it into a passive income machine. You can make money on autopilot and you won’t have to resort to any shady tactics to do so.

Check out these seven totally legitimate ways to make passive income from your blog.

#1. Sell Resources and Templates You Created for Personal Use

Sherry, the Canadian blogger behind the blog Save Spend Splurge, found herself in $60,000 worth of debt after college.

This is a predicament shared by many millennials today. But instead of paying her debt back slowly with minimum payments, Sherry created a budgeting template in Excel that helped her get that entire debt load off of her back just 18 months later.

After starting her personal finance blog, Sherry realized something. If her Excel template was powerful enough to clear her debt in 18 months, it could help her readers too.

So she called it “the Budgeting Tool” and listed it for sale on her blog for $50:

She then made it easy to find by adding a link in her top menu and sidebar:

You may have created some resources for your personal use that would be useful for your readers, too. In fact, maybe you’ve created a resource that they’d be happy to pay for.

For example, if you blog about weddings and you’ve created your own invitations, you can sell them as printables. If you blog about graphic design, you have probably created Photoshop templates that you could sell. Or if you’re a travel blogger, you could sell bag-packing checklists or trip-planning worksheets.

Whatever niche you’re in, chances are there’s plenty of opportunity for selling such resources and templates.

#2. Ship Physical Products (Without the Inventory Headaches)

When you think of selling physical products on your blog, it might seem like a nightmare. You imagine yourself in your living room, surrounded by products and empty boxes, with dozens of printed-out orders in hand, and you’re trying to make sure everybody gets exactly what they ordered.

But these days, you can sell products without needing to store, package, and send them yourself. You can use dropshipping companies that do it for you.

Dropshipping is a method of ecommerce that lets you transmit orders directly to the supplier. The supplier will then take care of the packaging and ship the product directly to the customer.

You don’t have to lift a finger, your spare bedroom doesn’t have to turn into a stockroom, and the USPS guy won’t come knocking on your door every day.

Benny Hsu from Get Busy Living sells his own t-shirts through one of these companies:

Benny uses Teespring, a shirt and apparel dropshipping and manufacturing company that allows you to design your own products and sell them via its platform.

He earned $100,000 in five months through selling t-shirts. He tested several designs and after he found which ones sold well, he could sit back and watch the sales come in.

Offering a physical product on your blog doesn’t have to mean constant inventory management. It can mean dropshipping and selling your products passively for years to come.

She sells The Lost Art of Natural Parenting for $17. She’s set up a sales page on her blog, and also sells it to her subscribers through an email autoresponder series, allowing her to sell her ebook on autopilot:

The beauty of publishing ebooks is that you can offer them to your readers as a digital download, wiping your hands clean of having to handle and ship a physical book. Once you write it, it can truly be passive.

Having written the 129-page ebook in 2016, Tracy can now earn money from selling it for years to come, no matter whether she’s traveling, working in her day job, exploring, or spending time with her son.

#4. Promote Other People’s Products and Earn Steady Commissions

You probably use several products related to your blog niche, right?

I might even guess that you love some of those products. If you nodded yes, then you can probably reap the benefits of this “holy grail” of passive blogging income: affiliate marketing.

Leanne Vogel, a nutrition educator and the blogger behind the keto blog Healthful Pursuit, uses many supplements in her own diet. So when she’s writing blog posts or recording podcast episodes, mentioning those products is natural.

When one of her audience members buys from her referral link, she makes an affiliate commission. And that, my friends, is “passive income”: referring your audience to products you know and love and getting paid for it, too.

For example, check out how Leanne places an affiliate link for Perfect Keto products in her blog post:

She incorporated the link naturally within an article, giving her audience a discount just for them.

Leanne gets a commission for referring sales to Perfect Keto, and her audience finds out about a product that she loves and uses. It’s a win-win.

#5. Sell Courses That Teach Highly Desired Skills

Your audience wants to develop skills that will help them fulfill their goals. You can get paid teaching them those skills. And you don’t even have to do it in person. (Wouldn’t be passive if you did, now would it?)

Blogger Sarah Lambert writes a photography blog for moms, and she gets to do just that by selling online courses to her audience, teaching them how to do what she loves to do.

She then sells a course that teaches her audience how to use their cameras to take great pictures of their children.

All you need is the course content, and a course-creation platform like Teachable or ClickFunnels.

You can sell the courses on your website like Sarah does, through your email list, and by mentioning it in articles where it fits.

This can make you a lot of money as courses can sell for high dollar amounts. Many bloggers charge anywhere from $100 to $1,000 for their courses. When it comes to pricing your course, you should keep this in mind:

If you want to charge high prices, you absolutely can, but you must make big promises. Similarly, if you want to charge low prices, you absolutely can, but you must make small promises. In either case, though, the value of the promise should be at least 10X the price.
— Jon Morrow

Online education is a $107 billion industry. A lot of that profit comes from bloggers selling courses around their topics. They organize their content into a learning system and add immense value to their readers’ lives.

What can you teach your readers that would add value to their lives?

#6. Create Software That Fills a Desperate Need (Even if You’re Not a Developer)

When Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income launched his podcast, he couldn’t find the perfect podcast player. He wanted one that looked good on his site, but also had the capabilities that the established podcast players had.

Instead of waiting for somebody else to make a better program, he hired people to create the player he wanted: The Smart Podcast Player.

Pat sells the podcast player on his blog and in his online courses about podcasting.

Ever use software and wish it were better? Does your audience desperately need an app that doesn’t even exist yet? Consider making it (of having it made) yourself.

Admittedly, this requires you to either be a developer or be able to hire one. But if you can swing it, you can profit.

#7. Offer a Challenge That Will Change Your Readers’ Lives

In 2014, I began to enact dozens of tiny changes in my life (like waking up earlier, making time for fitness every day, and journaling). I blogged about many of these changes as I saw them make a positive impact on my life.

As these small changes turned into habits, I realized something:

Every small, positive change we make in our lives pays compound interest.

The Unsettle Challenge is a paid email series that delivers one email a day for 30 days, each challenging the reader to make a positive change in their lives, like eliminate wasted time or drink a green smoothie every day.

I charge $30 for it — one dollar for each day of the challenge — and sell it to my subscribers through an automated email:

The challenge still sells, even two years after I launched it.

And I haven’t touched the sales email, the challenge, or the sales page at all since it launched.

In an online world full of free challenges, you might doubt that you can charge for a challenge, but I’m proof that you can — as long as the challenge offers value.

Turn Your Blog into a Passive Income Machine and Start Living the Dream

You started blogging because you love your topic.

You want to share your passion with the world, add value to your reader’s lives, and do what you love.

But you also want to earn a bit of money from your blog. And what better way to do that than to earn passive income — so you can do what professional bloggers are known for: travel the world, make money at home in your pajamas, and spend more time with your family.

The good news: There are plenty of opportunities to earn passive income from your blog, from affiliate marketing to creating your own physical products. You just have to figure out which method suits you best.

Email 8: 24 Hour

This is the last email in the sequence and probably the most important one. In most cases, this is where most sales will happen. Include:

A clear warning that the offer expires in 24 hours.

Keep it short and simple.

Briefly highlight the product benefits.

Emphasize that this is their last chance to get in with the special offer.

As you see, this funnel is way more aggressive than Kim's funnel. But it's also quite effective depending on your audience.

It also doesn't only sell. It provides value by giving some actionable info to help your subscribers.

My Webinar Funnel

The single most effective strategy I've used for making sales is doing webinars.

But these webinars don't work by themselves. I combine them with an 8 – 14 day email sequence.

Pre-Webinar Emails

I combine Webinar + Email

Here are the three emails that go out before the webinar:

Email 1: Thanks for Registering

This is a very simple email where I include three things:

Thank you for registering

Here are the webinar details (topic, date and time)

See you soon.

Simple and to the point.

Email 2: Before we Get Started

Depending on when the person registered, this email will go out on the next day. The main goal of this email is to get them to connect with me. Here's what I include:

A personal story. The personal story shares my why. Because if people connect with why you do what you do, they will be more likely to care about what you do. In my case, I share a picture of my family and talk about how I left my job to work from home so that I can be with them.

I then ask them to hit reply share their why.

Like with Kim's situation, I get tons of replies from this email, and I reply to every one.

Email 3: Reminder

Reminder

This is a simple reminder that goes out on the day before (or the day of) the webinar.

Because people tend to get a lot of emails, it's a good idea to send a reminder so that it can be top of mind.

Post-Webinar Emails

The emails that go out after the webinar are the most important emails in this funnel. It's where most sales usually come in.

Email 4: Replay + Special Offer

Replay plus special offer

Here are the elements of this email:

Thanks for joining me on the webinar.

At the end of the webinar, I made a special offer. Here are the details.

Give a deadline (I usually go with 3 days after the webinar, but this varies depending on the audience).

Email 5: Personal Story

Here are the elements of this email:

Share a personal story

This personal story must relate to the problem your product/service solves

The goal is to connect with your subscribers even more and help them see the value in what you offer.

Email 6: Questions + 1 day remaining

Here are the elements of this email:

Answer 2 or 3 questions about your product.

The goal is to overcome objections.

Give the 24-hour warning about the special offer coming to an end.

Email 7: 12 hours remaining

Here are the elements of this email:

Time Limit

Reminder: there are only 12 hours remaining.

Emphasize one huge benefit of your product. Not a feature, but a benefit.

Give them the link to buy the product.

Email 8: Last chance

Here are the elements of this email:

This email should be short, sweet and to the point.

Let them know this is their last chance to join.

Emphasize the deadline.

Recommended Tools

Recommended Tools

There are a few tools that I recommend that are great tools for helping you optimize your funnel. Here are those tools:

For creating opt-in pages

Thrive Architect: This is what I use for creating my opt-in pages. I like it because it looks good and you don't need a monthly payment to use it. This is a little more technical to setup than the second option, but much more affordable. And the result looks great.

LeadPages: This is an easier system for creating opt-in pages. But it can be pricey because you pay a monthly subscription.

Email marketing services

There are many email marketing services out there and any would work for the funnels I shared here.

For creating urgency

There are two tools I use for creating a sense of urgency in my campaigns:

MotionMail: This service allows you to create countdown timers for your emails. It's very easy and compatible with any email marketing service.

Thrive Ultimatum: This plugin allow you to create time-sensitive campaigns on your blog. It will automatically redirect people when your campaigns are over. It will also add countdown timers to your blog. It's very powerful.

Where will you start?

Now that we have gone through the three different funnels, this is the question I leave with you.

Every spare moment is consumed by your up-and-coming business as you toil, plot and plan.

It’s been a side-gig until now because you’re still tethered to your day job. But you can’t wait to march into your boss’s office and plonk your resignation letter on his desk.

You’re unsure now is the right time, though. What if you’re not ready? What if you take the leap and land in financial ruin? What if your business is a laughable failure and you wind up counting your pennies for your next meal and begging for work to keep the lights on?

Oh crap! Feels risky, right?

It doesn’t have to be. Because you can take precautions. You can minimize the risks. And you can make sure the time is right.

The 4 Big Risks of Quitting Your Job to Work for Yourself

Staying in a job you hate will condemn you to misery, right? But what if quitting winds up making you even more miserable? In truth, it’s a possibility many people ignore. Because leaving the security that comes from a steady job with a steady income means, in the early days, you’re as vulnerable as a tiny boat in an angry sea.

Here are the four biggest risks you face when quitting your job — especially if you quit too soon.

Risk #1: Your Business Fails and Now You’re Unemployed

Most new businesses fail within the first five years. And you’d be naïve to think it couldn’t happen to yours. So be smart and watch the horizon with vigilance in case your brilliant idea isn’t quite as brilliant as you think it is.

Financial momentum can be hard to maintain. Then bills mount up, your bank balance starts to redline, and you’re forced to look for a new job to make ends meet. Ouch.

Risk #2: You Face a Financial Crisis and Can’t Make Ends Meet

Even if your business is booming, that doesn’t mean you’re financially safe. You could lose a major client, wind up too sick to work or get sidelined by a horrid life event.

And let’s face it, if your income dries up you’ll sink pretty damn fast. You’ve got to be financially responsible to survive in the entrepreneurial world. It’s not sexy, yet it’s undeniably essential.

Risk #3: You Discover You Don’t Have What it Takes

Working for yourself ain’t easy. And the fact is that not everybody has the discipline and tenacity to see it through.

The freedom of being your own boss, working in your PJs and avoiding long torturous meetings is enticing. But it’s this very attraction that lures people who aren’t always cut out for it.

The truth is that many people suck at being their own boss. Many people underestimate how much hard work it is. And many people start to endlessly procrastinate when they no longer have a boss breathing down their neck.

Risk #4: You Hate Self-Employment as Much as (or More Than) Your Day Job

Just like a sparkly new love affair, it’s easy to fall head over heels with your new business idea.

In the early days, the little annoyances seem insignificant. Then, fast forward three months and you’re sitting in your home office, feeling isolated from the world, stressed out over disappearing clients, and you realize the honeymoon is over. Misery engulfs you as your new reality is a far cry from what you expected it to be. Maybe self-employment wasn’t the answer to the problem you had with your job after all.

8 Boxes You Must Tick Before Leaving Your Safe, Cozy Job

Now you know the risks that come with quitting your job to work for yourself. And let’s be real — you’ll never eliminate those risks completely.

But if you tick the following eight boxes, you’ll know you’ve taken proper precautions to minimize the risks. You’ll know the time is as right as it’ll ever be to send that resignation letter. And you can feel confident you’ll land on your feet when you do.

#1. You Know How Much Money You Need to Survive Each Month

First, if you want to stay financially safe, you must calculate how much money you need each month to keep your head above water.

So, for one or two months, track all your expenses, and when you’re done, divide them into two columns: essentials (food, rent, utilities, debt payments, etc.) and luxuries (Netflix subscriptions, nights out, etc.).

The sum of your essential expenses makes up your survival budget — the minimum amount you need to survive each month without running into serious trouble.

Then, from the luxuries column, pick three expenses (at most) that you feel you can’t live without. Give yourself some financial wiggle room to accommodate these from time to time, to keep yourself from growing resentful. (It’s difficult to remain motivated when you can’t indulge from time to time.)

Let’s call this your minimum income goal — the minimum amount you need to live in relative comfort every month. This will decide whether you can tick the next box.

Now, once your side income meets your minimum income goal, you may be tempted to send your resignation letter straight away. But hold on…

If you want to be careful, you shouldn’t celebrate too soon. Meeting your goal one month doesn’t mean you’ll meet it again the month after, or the one after that. It may just mean you had a good month.

But if you’ve earned a consistent side income for five months straight, you can feel confident you can keep it up once you quit your job (especially since you’ll have more time on your hands).

#3. You Have a Financial Life Raft That Will Sustain You for at Least Six Months

Next, you’ll need a fully stocked hardship fund. Working for yourself means you carry all the risk on your shoulders — which is exciting and terrifying at the same time.

What if your website faces a huge drop in rankings due to a Google algorithm change? What if Facebook changes its ad policies which severely limits your reach? What if you throw your back out and can’t get any work done while you heal?

To avoid a crushing financial crisis, you’ll need to save up enough money to cover your essential expenses for six months minimum. It’s the smart entrepreneur’s contingency fund that’ll give you the time you’ll need to get back on your feet or, if necessary, find a new job.

#4. You’ve Had Your Side Gig for at Least Six Months, and It Still Excites You

You’re going to spend day and night with your business, so it’s got to be the thing that gets you out of bed, not the thing that sends you diving back under the covers. True entrepreneurs live and breathe their business — by choice. It never fully leaves their mind, even on days off.

If you haven’t spent time working on something every day, you won’t know if you’ll enjoy it.

But if you’ve already worked on it for six months alongside your day job, and you still feel that ping of excitement, you’ll know it’s what you truly want. On top of that, you’ll also prove to yourself you have the self-discipline to succeed.

#5. You’ve Written down Your Short- and Long-Term Goals

Ever worked hard all day and not achieved a thing? Bumbling about with no clear direction is a recipe for fast and definitive failure.

To stay focused and moving in the right direction, it’s essential to have two types of goals. A short-term goal you’re 100% confident you can achieve. And a long-term, slightly audacious big picture goal.

Both should be written using the SMART goal formula: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timed. Mark your measurable progress checkpoints clearly on your planner so you can tick them off on a weekly, quarterly and annual basis.

Doing this means you’ll stay on the right track to business success. If you ever find yourself struggling to meet your goals, you’ll discover it in time to change direction, and not too late to avert disaster.

#6. You’ve Mapped All Your Activities for the First 12 Weeks After Quitting

When you no longer have a boss chasing you with deadlines, it becomes tempting to slack off. You may convince yourself to enjoy your newfound freedom for a while, and that can send you down a path of poor productivity and dismal results.

That’s why you need to establish momentum early on, which you can only do through consistent and continuous action. So your best safeguard against productivity sabotage is to plan with military precision.

Type up a detailed twelve-week action plan, so you know exactly what you’ll be doing each day — starting from day one. Then, start doing. It’s your recipe for success.

#7. You’ve Identified Two Alternative Work Locations

Like it or not, going from a bustling corporate job to a lonely home office can be a shock to the system. Working for yourself may become a slippery slope to darkness as you begin to crave conversation and accountability. Self-employment may soon start to feel like a productivity-zapping isolation cell.

You can avoid this by finding ways to meet your need for human connection that doesn’t involve begging for your job back.

Prepare yourself with a list of at least two alternative work locations that enable you to be part of a crowd while working for yourself. Look for local co-working spaces and coffee shops that offer free wifi.

In many cases, sitting in a coffee shop for a few hours each week as you tap away on your laptop can be the perfect antidote for loneliness.

#8. You’ve Recruited at Least Three People for Support and Accountability

It’s impossible to survive, let alone thrive, in the entrepreneurial world alone. If you’re serious (and I know you are), you simply must surround yourself with people who support you and people who hold you accountable.

It can be the difference between sinking or swimming as you discover what it takes to work for yourself.

Here’s a quick hit list of things you can do:

Find two to five people with whom you feel close who will support and encourage you and your plans. Look to family or friends and share your goals and progress with them.

Join local business networking groups and online forums — and start contributing.

Surround yourself with guidance and advice by finding a professional mentor, or hire a business coach.

Commit to weekly accountability meetings with people from courses you’re enrolled in or groups you’re a member of. Ask someone to be your accountability buddy or join/start a mastermind group.

And those are the eight boxes you must tick to determine you’re ready to leave you job. Here’s an infographic that sums them all up (click on the image to see a larger view):

Embed This Infographic On Your Site

Ticked All the Boxes? You’re Ready to Quit Your Job

You know that taking the leap into the entrepreneurial world is not for the faint-hearted — and it excites you more than anything.

If you’ve ticked all eight boxes, you should feel confident you can safely quit your job.

You’re now prepared for the adventure with a clear roadmap, a solid safety net and a strong support network.

You’re ready to transition from employee to entrepreneur.

Now is the time to stop playing a small game.

Because freedom awaits.

About the Author: Miranda Hill is a writer and coach who helps life-hungry souls get unstuck from the chaos of life. If you want to stop spinning your wheels, hopping from one thing to the next in search of answers, discover the “10 Mindset Secrets That Set Truly Successful Writers Apart” and realise your full writing potential today.

No dragging your butt out of bed at an ungodly hour, sitting in traffic, being stuck inside an office all day, and slaving away your life for a measly paycheck.

Instead, wake up whenever you feel like it, saunter over to the laptop in your skivvies, and sip a cup of java while you “work.” Take a vacation whenever you want, spend time with your loved ones, and travel the freakin’ world.

Hell, yeah…

Too bad it’s just a fairytale, though. We’ve all seen the scammy ads about making $80 an hour filling out surveys, starting your own online store in a “virtual mall,” making megabucks from reselling old crap on eBay or Amazon. There are a gazillion different variations, all of them promising you easy money, all of them stoking your hope of a better life, all of them a little too ridiculous for you to believe in, even though you really, REALLY want to believe.

But you’re not a fool. You know they’re not telling you the truth. It can’t be as easy as they make it sound.

And you’re right. I’ve made my living on the Internet for eight years now, and while it’s certainly nice, there’s also a lot nobody is telling you. Not because it’s a secret, but because most people don’t actually want the truth. They want to believe it’s easy, fun, straightforward.

If anything though, it’s the opposite, and that brings us to the first lesson:

Lesson #1: You can’t do this in your “spare time.”

Regardless of whether you’re starting a blog, building an online course, or creating your own virtual storefront, you probably don’t think of it as a “business.” It’s a project, a hobby, a “side hustle.” No offices, no employees, no budgets or business plans – it’s just you tinkering around in your spare time.

Right?

Well… not if you want to succeed.

In my experience, people who make a nice living online view it as a business from day one. That doesn’t necessarily mean they get an office or hire employees, but they approach it with the same mindset any sane person would have when starting any other type of business.

For instance, let’s say you’re starting a dry-cleaning business. You’d probably go to work for another dry cleaner first, learn the craft, figure out how you would do things differently, save your money, and then launch your own competing dry-cleaning business with a solid understanding of the market and what it takes to succeed.

In other words, you would put serious thought and effort into it, start preparing months or even years in advance and work your ass off for several years to make the business take off. That’s a normal mindset for anyone starting a new venture.

For some reason though, people’s mindset is entirely different when thinking about making money on the Internet. They are looking for quick and easy, not hard and long. They want a way to game the system, not a way to win the game. They try to minimize their investment of time and money, not maximize their ROI.

And I’ll be straight with you:

That’s dumb.

Making money on the Internet is just as difficult as making money in any other type of business. The capital requirements aren’t as high as opening a brick-and-mortar store like a dry-cleaning business or a restaurant, meaning it’s easier to get started, but you’re also facing global competition. You’ll need to be better, smarter, and faster than entrepreneurs only competing in their local markets.

The only appropriate mindset is to accept that you are investing years of your life and every penny of your savings into a venture that might ultimately fail. If it does succeed, it’s also not going to be because of your creative genius or some magical technology that makes money pop out of your computer. It’s going to be because of hard work, sound thinking, and skill.

Especially skill. Let’s talk about that next…

Lesson #2: Being smart isn’t enough.

We’ve all heard the story of the stereotypical Internet entrepreneur. Some smart kid sees an opportunity nobody else does, works night and day to create a groundbreaking product, and then goes on to become filthy stinking rich. In other words, the equation is something like this:

Smart + opportunity + hard work = success.

And that’s a beautiful story. Like many stories, it’s also mostly true, but it’s missing some important details.

To make money online, you do need to be smart, you need to find an opportunity, and you need to work hard. All those variables are totally accurate. What no one tells you is that there’s one additional variable that’s just as important as all the others combined:

Skill. If we were to modify our equation, it would look like this:

(Smart + opportunity + hard work) X Skill = Success.

And here’s the part that’s really hard to wrap your mind around:

The specific skill you need changes depending on the opportunity. If you want to start a freelance graphic design business, you’d better be a pretty freaking good graphic designer. If you want to start the next Facebook, on the other hand, you’d better be a pretty freaking amazing programmer. To be more precise, you need whatever skills are necessary to capitalize on the opportunity better than all the other smart, hard-working people pursuing the same opportunity.

In other words, you need to be elite. I’m not sure what the precise measurement of “eliteness” is, but if I had to put a number on it, I would say you need to be in the top one percent of all people worldwide with your skill. That might sound scary, but it’s actually not a very high bar because the vast majority of people doing anything suck. If you have at least a little natural talent for the skill, you can probably become a member of the top one percent with a few years of diligent work and study. Here’s how…

Lesson #3: Education is everything (and nothing).

The whole mythos around Internet entrepreneurs is they spurn education. Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates dropped out of school. Tech billionaire Peter Thiel pays entrepreneurs $100,000 NOT to go to college. That’s as “anti-education” as it gets.

Or is it?

If you look a little deeper, you’ll find that most entrepreneurs are devout believers in education, but they also believe that certain systems of education, such as universities, are fundamentally flawed. They espouse a more experimental model of learning where the student states their assumptions, poses a hypothesis, and then proceeds to test that hypothesis, not only to learn but also to hone their skills in the real world.

And it’s not just a learning style. In many cases, there’s no alternative.

With making money on the Internet, for example, there isn’t a degree program or book that’ll teach you everything. It doesn’t exist, and it never will, because the Internet is evolving too quickly. By the time someone created the book or degree program, most of it would be out of date.

There’s one exception: skills. Many of the skills necessary to build an online business either don’t change much, or they are easily transferable. For example, if you learn one programming language, it’s relatively easy to pick up another. Negotiation, business writing, and marketing are skill sets that haven’t changed much in decades or even centuries.

And it’s useful to have a teacher. If you’re learning how to write an advertisement, for example, you can learn a lot faster if you have a master copywriter critique your ads.

In my experience, this is where books, online courses, and other forms of traditional education shine: the acquisition of evergreen skills. You can then apply those skills in the real world to continue learning. For instance, the following skills are always in demand and have long-term value:

Copywriting

Graphic design

Programming

Content creation

Content promotion

Marketing automation

Public speaking

Ad management

Social media management

Project management

Freelancers with elite skills in one or more of those areas often make six figures per year, working completely online. They get to choose their hours, travel when they feel like it, and, and live a pretty awesome lifestyle.

Granted, it’s not total freedom, because they do have to work, but they also have a lot of control over how they work, and in my experience, that’s what really matters. Here’s what I mean…

Lesson #4 You don’t actually want freedom.

Maybe it’s the idea of working in your underwear, choosing your own hours, traveling the world, or whatever. The idea is passive income = freedom.

And here’s the good news:

It’s true. Over the last eight years, I’ve built a passive income “machine” that’s allowed me to travel and live a life most people only dream about.

But it took a long time. Contrary to popular belief, passive income isn’t just something you can create out of thin air. It takes time to build, and it’s a five-stage process:

Learn a valuable skill. We discussed this one in the last couple of lessons. I recommend picking one of the ten skills and taking online classes.

Practice until you are elite. Again, you are competing against everyone in the world, so it’s essential you’re in the top 1%. The bad news is, you’ll probably start in the bottom 10% and work your way up, usually by working as either an employee or freelancer.

Start your own business. Once you’ve built a collection of elite skills, you’ll probably run across an irresistible opportunity, and you’ll jump in with both feet. It’ll take you several years or maybe even decades to become a successful entrepreneur.

Replace yourself. Passive income is the result of turning what you do into a system that runs without you. Sometimes an employee replaces you, sometimes you can automate everything with software, and sometimes you simply teach what you’ve learned through an online course.

Fine tune the machine. The bad news about passive income is it’s almost never entirely passive. Yes, you can reduce your number of hours, but you’ll still want to spend a few hours each week fine-tuning the machine. This is where the idea of the “Four Hour Workweek” came from.

And let’s be clear:

You don’t receive any passive income until the final step. From start to finish, I don’t know anyone who has done it in less than five years, and it takes most people 10+.

I realize that’s way more work than you probably anticipated, but here’s the good news:

Chances are, you don’t really want total freedom. What you actually desire is flexibility, and that’s much easier to achieve.

What’s the difference?

Well, freedom means you can get up every morning and do whatever the hell you want. Play golf, go surfing, travel to Paris, or just stay in bed all day. You’re in total control of every aspect of your life.

Flexibility, on the other hand, only gives you partial control. You still have to work, but you decide when and where. For instance, maybe you take your family to Italy in the summer for six weeks, work every morning and evening on your laptop, and then gallivant around the rest of the day.

Still sounds pretty good, right? And the good news is, it takes far less time and effort to get there. Maybe 6-12 months.

Here’s how: take a few online courses on any of the skills I recommended, do a bit of free work for friends and family as a way of building your portfolio, and then apply for virtual jobs requiring that skill. You may not make a lot of money to start, but as your skill grows, so will your income, and you’ll eventually find it easy to replace your day job.

You can also accelerate the process by moving to a cheaper country, which brings us to:

Lesson #5: It sucks to be an American.

Probably going to get flamed for saying that, but it’s true, and not just for Americans. Living in Canada, England, Australia, or many European countries is just as tough, and the reason is simple:

It’s expensive.

Between our houses, cars, meals, gas, and all the other little expenses, it’s hard to survive in most cities for under $3000 per month. In some big cities like San Francisco, New York, or London, you can barely get by on $8-10k a month.

But take a look at this…

I rented a luxury condo on the beach in Mazatlan, Mexico for $1600 a month. A meal at a restaurant was about four dollars. I could get a reputable doctor who spoke English to do a house call for $20. Altogether, I spent about $3,000 a month, and I lived like a king.

And here’s the crazy part:

I was able to make that much working only 20 hours a week as a writer and editor. As my skills improved, eventually my income crossed $10,000 per month – more than three times my living expenses.

There were also tax advantages. I won’t go into the details here, but Google “earned income tax credit.” It’s complicated, but you can actually save a lot of money on your taxes by leaving the US.

Altogether, it’s far easier to make a living online when you’re living in another country, and the lifestyle is better too. The biggest reason I came back to the US is that I eventually started my own company, and banks get a little nervous when you’re processing more than $1 million per year in credit card transactions from your laptop on a beach in Mexico. No idea why… haha. It was also nice coming home after living abroad for years.

The bottom line?

Not only does the Internet give you opportunities for increasing your income, but it also gives you ways to reduce your expenses substantially. It’s by no means a requirement to move to another country, but it certainly makes making a living easier, and when you’re getting started, you can use all the advantages you can get.

Here’s How to Get Started Making Money Online

So, we’ve covered a lot of ground here.

Mindsets, skills, passive income, having the flexibility you want to live the way you want. Hopefully, it’s all starting to make more sense.

But chances are, you’re wondering what to do first.

Should you create an online course? Start a blog? Find a freelance gig where you can learn and grow?

There are a lot of options, and the truth is, all of them are viable. Nobody follows exactly the same path.

But here’s what I recommend:

Figure out what skills come naturally to you. Chances are one or two of the ten skills I listed are easier for you than for most other people.

Buy a few online courses on those topics. In the future, I’ll publish some recommended courses, but until then, just use Google.

Start applying for freelance gigs. You might get rejected a lot at first, but eventually, somebody will say yes, and you’ll make your first dollar off the Internet.

From there, you can scale up. Maybe you’ll start your own business with employees and offices, or maybe you’ll just become a highly paid freelancer. Neither path is right or wrong. It’s just two different lifestyles.

The bottom line?

Making money online isn’t a fairytale. You can do it. You just have to be smart about it and have realistic expectations.

How do you build a profitable personal brand and turn that into a successful business? Are you trying to build a personal brand with your blog?

Do you want to leverage that personal brand to build a profitable online business?

If so, you are in the right place. In this interview, Chris Ducker shares his best tips to help you make that happen.

Listen to This Episode

Who is Chris Ducker?

Chris Ducker

Chris Ducker is the bestselling author of Virtual Freedom and founder of youpreneur.com—the entrepreneurial mastermind community that helps experts become the go-to leader in their industry.

A serial entrepreneur, Chris has built several businesses since venturing into the world of entrepreneurship in 2004, which today collectively house over 450 full-time employees and generate a multi-seven-figure annual revenue, worldwide.

A highly sought-after keynote speaker, trusted international business mentor, blogger, and podcaster, Chris is featured regularly in Entrepreneur, Inc., Success, Forbes, The Huffington Post, and several other key media outlets.

Chris recently relocated back to the UK after many years based in the Philippines, and now lives with his wife and four children in Cambridgeshire.

Why “Youpreneur-ship”?

A few years back, Chris came to a realization. After building successful business, he analyzed who did business with his companies.

Quote Chris Ducker

What stood out was that those people only did business with his companies because of him.

They had to buy into him before they could buy into what he had to offer.

That's when he saw the power of a personal brand. He was able to build his businesses because of his relationships.

Relationships are important and we should treasure them. What we do, as bloggers, centers around this concept.

And you build those relationships of trust by showing up and providing value.

But to do that, there is one element that's needed.

“You must be seen to sell in order to build influence” – Chris Ducker

How to Build a Profitable Personal Brand

Let's assume that you're convinced about the power of building a personal brand.

Let's say you understand that this can help you build a profitable business.

The next question is – How do you do it? Here are Chris' tips:

Start with Defining

You have to start by defining who you are and what you want to be known for.

Chris recommend doing the Youpreneur self-awareness test. Get a paper and draw a line down the middle.

On the left side, create your “flatter yourself list”. Write down all the things you are good at.

On the right side, create your “keep it real list”. These are the things you are not so good at.

This exercise will then become the blueprint for you to follow. Your goal is to do more of what you're good at and less of the other stuff.

Start Creating Content

It's time to start creating the content that you think your potential audience wants to see/hear.

If you keep at it, you will notice that in 6 months, something magical will take place.

Your audience will start talking back to you and sharing things like:

Start creating content

What they need help with

What they struggle with

What they enjoy

What they don't enjoy

As you get that feedback, you can start refining your content and create more of what they want.

Your goal is to become somebody's favorite content creator. Once you are 100 people's favorite, you can build a business.

Spread Your Message

It is important to have a media company mindset. Now that you have your content, it's time to get the word out there.

Spread your message

Some important questions to ask are:

What kind of authority do you want to be?

Why is it important?

What does that look like?

How can you spread that message going forward?

Once you have explored those questions, it's time to get personal.

It's important to get to know your community members personally by GENUINELY caring.

The more you comment using a multimedia mindset, the more of an impact you can have.

Instead of responding to a tweet with a simple tweet, do a 15-second video reply.

Send thank you cards. Do the simple things that stand out more than the usual things everyone else does.

Listen to your Community Members/Audience

This is a very important part of business that a lot of people ignore.

Listen to your community members

Your community should be the people who shape your business through their feedback.

Your role is to be the problem-solver. And if you do that well enough with enough class and substance, you will be blessed to put a price tag on your solution.

Start creating the solutions to the problems your community tells you about.

This can be as simple as coaching/consulting or more involved like a membership site.

And if you need more…

Rise of the Youpreneur

It's obvious that Chris knows his stuff. And fortunately, he has put together a great book that walks you through this process in great detail.

If you are trying to build a profitable personal brand business, I recommend for you to grab a copy.

The Rise of the Youpreneur is available wherever books are sold. But, I highly recommend you grab it from his site, because there are some sweet bonuses available.

#1. You Build a Network Your Competitors Will Envy

Most people like the idea of gaining free publicity for their work, so they’ll often agree to spend 30+ minutes with you to get exposed to your audience.

And when you spend time cultivating the relationship before, during, and after the interview, you can build a powerful network of people who can help you grow your business and blog.

Over the last two and a half years, I’ve interviewed more than 100 guests for my own podcast. While I’m not best friends with every person who’s come on the show, I have kept in touch with people with whom I had a strong connection.

And some cool business opportunities have come out of those, which wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t established the initial relationship through my podcast.

#2. You Can Bask in the Spillover of Other People’s Star Power

Some time ago, I had Tucker Max on my podcast. (In case you don’t know, he’s a three-time New York Times best-selling author.)

His team reached out to me and pitched Tucker as a guest to promote his new business, Book in a Box.

Once the episode went live, I got this message from a friend in my network:

Leveraging the authority of those you associate with is a smart way to build influence and social proof.

When you interview people for your podcast, particularly folks with larger followings than you, it boosts your credibility. Your audience will think, “If she has so-and-so on her show, she must know what she’s talking about!”

And you don’t have to wait for your dream guests to come to you. You can reach out to them and explain why coming on your show would benefit them.

People aren’t quick to turn off a podcast once they start listening, and they can listen to a podcast while doing something else, like cooking, driving or walking the dog. It’s an ideal medium for busy people.

So repurposing ideas you’ve shared on your blog for a podcast is well worth your time — especially the ideas that have already proven popular.

For example, here’s an article I published on my Inc. column that showed the results of research I’d done with entrepreneurs:

Spoken language is “hard-wired inside the human brain. Language capacity in humans evolved about 100,000 years ago, and the human brain is fully adapted for language processing… A related fact should be self-evident: Reading and writing are acquired skills for which the human brain is not yet fully evolved.” (Liberman, Shankweiler, & Liberman, 1989) Human brains are naturally wired to speak; they are not naturally wired to read and write.

Reading and writing are skills we may take for granted today, but these skills have only recently become prevalent among the human population. By contrast, we’ve been speaking and listening for ages.

It’s no surprise that hearing someone’s voice makes us feel more connected to them than just reading their words.

#5. Your Bank Account Will Get More Direct Deposits

Adding a podcast to your content marketing can directly increase the revenues for your blog and business.

The most common way people monetize their podcasts is through selling sponsorships, or commercial spots that are read before and during an episode.

John Lee Dumas is host of the hit podcast Entrepreneur on Fire. Every month he publishes an income report for the business he’s built around the show. For December alone, his sponsorship revenue for his daily podcast was more than $64,000.

The larger the audience is for your show, the better you position yourself to earn a decent income from third-party sponsors.

But getting sponsors for your show isn’t the only way to monetize your podcast. Many hosts promote their own products and services to their listeners through designated ad spots.

My friend Vernon Foster is a podcast coach at PodParrot. He says many of his clients make a ton of money with their podcast by highlighting their own products. He recommends podcasters with audiences of all sizes do the same:

You don’t have to be Tim Ferriss, Lewis Howes or Gary Vee either. There’s [sic] a lot of real estate podcasts you’ve never heard of that are quietly making a small fortune selling high-ticket [offers].

Side note: I met Vernon through my podcast, which goes to show how it can help you build your network!

#6. You Give Google More Reason to Notice You

Bloggers have long been on the hunt for ways to drive traffic to their blogs through SEO. The good news is that podcasting can help you with that as well.

Whenever you publish a new episode, you can add relevant written content to the “show notes” page on your website, which is indexable by search engines. Transcripts and detailed notes with time stamps are smart ways to add content to your site that might rank for long-tail keywords and draw more traffic.

Not only that, podcasting can also help you get links, which can boost your site’s authority in the eyes of Google. Whenever you have a guest on for an interview, you have a good chance they’ll link back to it from their site.

Lastly, publishing podcasts on your blog can also increase the average amount of time people stay on your site. Google likes to see this as well.

To the extent that you can, adding rich media in, like a podcast audio or a video, is super important because one of the hottest topics in terms of on page SEO is increasing the amount of dwell time on the site. [. . .] If you can get people to land on the page and click the audio file on your website, they stay a lot longer. Your dwell time goes through the roof, even if it is only a few people because a 15-20 minute podcast has a lot more people listening through longer.

#7. You’ll Be Prepared When Oprah Calls

Podcasting will you get you ready for future speaking opportunities that can expand your reach.

Imagine your blog getting so popular that you get called for a talk show interview, a TEDx talk, or to be a featured speaker at a conference. You want to be ready, right?

Having experience speaking in both scripted and off-the-cuff formats will prepare you for when those calls come.

When you step up to the mic on a consistent basis, you will discover your most relevant messages, refine your voice, and overcome any fears of public speaking that might otherwise hold you back.

A few months ago, I was a featured expert on a program with an NPR radio affiliate. The show’s producer read an article I published, and he invited me to speak more in-depth on the topic and to answer questions from listeners who called in.

My experiences in podcasting, both as a guest and a host, prepared me to be comfortable speaking without a script. As a result, I am ready to seize bigger opportunities that come my way.

It’s Time for You to Step Up to the Mic

Give your expertise an even bigger stage. A stage that enables you to transform the lives of even more people who crave your solutions.

Sure, it’ll take some practice.

But don’t most things that are worth it?

You don’t have to produce the next Serial, This American Life, or Smart Passive Income to reap the benefits of podcasting.

You’ve simply got to create a show that speaks to your ideal audience in a meaningful way.

You’ve already got the knowledge. And you’ve already got the ideas.

Now all you need is the mic.

About the Author: Sonia Thompson is a marketing strategist, consultant, and author focused on helping you create remarkable customer experiences that help you win more customers and keep them coming back for more. Grab your Podcast Launch Resource Sheet, so you know exactly what you need (and what you don’t) to start your podcast.

Are you looking for ways to increase the revenue you make from your blog?

Wish you had a few things you could try to day?

In this episode, I will share 7 things you can do to increase the value of your digital products.

Listen to This Episode

Lets Start with an Example

I started a biology blog a few years ago. Most of my content was videos.

At some point, I decided it was time to start making money with that blog. One of the things I decided to do was create and sell an ebook.

This was my first ebook and I wanted to make it special. I wanted people to see it and immediately think it was valuable.

So I decided to add more value by linking the content in the ebook with my videos.

Ebook Content are linked to my YouTube Videos

Whenever the buyer came to a section of the ebook that needed explanation, there was a solution.

Click the video icon and it will take you to a blog post with a video explanation.

It was such a hit that I sold thousands of dollars worth with minimal promotion.

Why Increase the Value

Increasing the value of your products can result in more money from your blog in your pockets. Would you complain about that? I'm guessing not.

Here are three ways this can happen:

The higher the value of your product, the more you can increase its pricing.

It empowers you to increase your pricing. If the value of your product is higher, it's quite logical that you can increase your price of that product.

Convince those who are on the ledge. Whenever you promote your product, there will be those who need some extra convincing. Adding more value to that product might be the thing to push them over to the bright side.

Increase Retention. If you're running a membership site, one of the big challenges is retaining members. Well, the more value they get from your site, the less likely they will be to cancel.

Seven Ways to Increase the Value of Your Products

Alright, you're sold. But now you need some practical ways that you can increase your product's value. Let's dive into seven ways…

Add more formats of content

Add more formats of the content

There are three main formats for your digital content – written, audio and video.

With my ebook, I added video content to my written content and that increased the perceived value. As a result, it was easier to sell.

What if you have a video course? Why not add some written handouts or downloadable MP3s? With more formats, you cater to more learning styles.

Add high-value bonuses

Add high-value bonuses

Who doesn't like bonuses? It feels like you”re wining a prize, doesn't it?

If you don't have any bonuses to go along with your product, then create some.

Author

Hi everyone I am Sandra Nelson 28 year old. I am living in Liverpool, UK in Winnipeg with my boy friend Mark. I love social media marketing and had worked as freelancer with many client in different countries.